Lewis Hamilton has urged fans to cool down on making judgements about his Ferrari career, begging for a much longer runway from them.
The British driver has had a rocky start to his dream team-up with the Italian F1 team, failing to finish on the podium in a grand prix as he approaches double-digit races since his move from Mercedes.
Hamilton spoke out about the early judgements before the recent triple-header of European races, where Ferrari were hoping to claw back some ground on their rivals, insisting that he wouldn’t ‘put it all on’ that trio of races.
“I don’t put it all on these three races,” he said. “If we were to have three bad races, hopes would still remain alive. I don’t believe that will be the case, but I’m just saying, we don’t pin it to one race. For me, I’m not judging our success by a short amount of racing, half a season, one season.
“Let’s talk at the end of my career here at Ferrari, at the end of a few years here at Ferrari, then let’s talk about what we’ve done. That’s when we can look back and say whether or not we were successful. These few months are paving stones towards where we’re going, and that’s that.”
Hamilton Ferrari spell has shades of fellow legend
It might’ve been good foresight on Hamilton’s part to play down the importance of the triple-header, as his podium-free run continued – and team-mate Charles Leclerc increased the gap between the pair in the drivers’ championship standings with back-to-back podiums in Monaco and Spain.
The seven-time world champion’s start to life in Italy has been, as the locals would say, molto garbagio. Probably. Not sure, really. My school didn’t offer Italian lessons and the Duolingo owl freaks me out.
The questions about the pace of the Ferrari are still there, and Hamilton’s right in many ways that his first year at the team won’t define his legacy, not even with the tifosi.
However. There’s always a ‘however’. We’ve seen the ‘dominant world champion goes to Ferrari later in his career’ thing play out before – and recently, too.
Sebastian Vettel was a year removed from the fourth of his four consecutive titles when he headed to Italy in 2015, finishing third in the championship that year and twice finishing as championship runner-up behind, yep, Hamilton.
While the 40-year-old isn’t likely to stay at the team for the six seasons that Vettel did, there are some striking similarities between the German’s spell with the Scuderia and the path Hamilton seems to be on.
Vettel never won the title with Ferrari, despite twice leading the standings at the halfway point of the season. Hamilton…well, he can say what he wants, but the goal in leaving Mercedes was to secure an eighth world championship. That looks a long way out of reach right now.
In each driver’s case, there was a dominant team that Ferrari were institutionally a little short of challenging. In Vettel’s case that team was Mercedes, while for Hamilton it’s McLaren (and okay, they’re not ‘a little short’ right now either).
Despite Vettel challenging for the title twice, and outperforming his team-mate in each of his first four seasons, there’s still heated debate over whether his time with the most famous team in F1 was a modest success or, ultimately, a disappointment. You come to Ferrari to win titles. You hire a four-time world champion to win titles. They failed to do that.
Hamilton looks on course to have a similar legacy with the team, if not a less sparkling one. ‘Judge me after a few years here’. Okay. But unless he starts at least beating his team-mate, that judgement won’t be kind when it arrives.
